The project attempts to broaden understanding of television's impact on human behavior and mental health through research in Brazil, the western hemisphere's second most populous and second vastest nation, and the world's fifth largest user of communications satellites, most notably for commercial television. The study focuses on the effects of television, which is a powerful socializing agent and mass opinion-molder, on individual and group behavior in small towns and rural areas, where, because of relative isolation and prior illiteracy, television's advent has constituted an especially novel, potent, rapid, and potentially disturbing introduction to the external world. This is an investigation, in a new setting, of concrete behavioral effects of a technological innovation that has done as much as any of our time to spread national and international information and to stimulate participation in the world cash economy, with the attendant stresses that effect both physical and mental health. For comparison through time, the research project draws on an excellent data base--the community studies done in different Brazilian regions prior to television. The project employs a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques to assess television's effects on behavior, perceptions, and knowledge, thus providing the basis for several levels of comparison--within and between communities, regions, and nations. The procedures include interview schedules, observational behavioral sampling, time allocation study, and other measures of television's effects on individual thought and action. The research project contributes to the training of American and Brazilian behavioral and social scientists and lays the groundwork for a continuing international scholarly interchange. Finally, it will produce a systematic corpus of data concerning television's impact in another national culture, a necessary step both in generalizing and refining the ongoing discussion among scholars and the public about that medium's effects on human behavior and mental health.